


Like He Matters

by Westgate (Harkpad)



Series: The Last Time You Slept [8]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-05
Updated: 2015-06-05
Packaged: 2018-04-02 23:20:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4077595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harkpad/pseuds/Westgate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When not on Avengers' business, Clint, Steve, and Phil keep busy with SHIELD business and each other. But Clint isn't keen on feeling like he's on the outside anymore, and Phil and Steve get a little caught up with work and each other. Clint spirals until things get put to right.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like He Matters

Clint had a few favorite duties for SHIELD that didn't involve missions or the Avengers. He loved training non-field personnel on weapons. They need to know the basics if they work for SHIELD, and teaching the administrative assistants, the cafeteria staff, the R&D nerds, the HR folks about firing a gun was really fucking rewarding.

The day Jan down in R&D showed up for training she was flat-out pissed that she had to learn how to use a gun ("I signed on to design things so we don't have to use guns!") but two weeks later she was signing up for range time during her breaks. Clint even convinced her to compete in the staff tournament and she nabbed third place on her first try.

He also loved helping Brad in Field Training design courses for new recruits. Parkour, good, old fashioned obstacle courses, field tests - he got to help design them because he beat, in record times, every single one thrown his way when he was a recruit. He got to do other things, too, like help design training for "non-traditional recruits" like he was.

He loved that term, "non-traditional."

Like he'd missed out on Christmas traditions, Halloween traditions, and Thanksgiving traditions, but also passing seventh grade math traditions, graduating from high school traditions - it cracked him up. So he helped catch some folks up to speed with their more "traditional" classmates. He liked that because it also meant he got to put some traditional assholes in their places from time to time when they targeted kids who hadn't done the whole high school and college thing. "Oh yeah, Agent Barton, Stilson called me a dumb hick this morning," meant Clint got to go give a talking-to, which always put a smile on his face.

So all of this meant that even when he wasn't doing Avengers missions, he was still having fun. It also made him late getting home some nights, which he also kind of loved. It meant he could walk in on Steve and Phil forgetting about dinner and working at the table. Phil was usually working on some sort of mission plans - maps, a lot of the time.

People'd probably be surprised at how much of Phil's time was spent with city maps, planning routes in and out of operation locations, calculating pedestrian time, motorcycle time, getaway car times and figuring out best routes to safe houses and other op points. Phil liked working with maps. He also liked working with maps in his unbuttoned dress shirt and his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his glasses on, low on his nose. It was hot. Steve would often be drawing or writing at the table with Phil, and he was usually in a dark colored t-shirt, cargo pants, and a baseball cap turned backwards, which absolutely made Clint's mouth go dry when he saw it.

They usually had soft jazz music playing in the background, and they'd both look up slowly when Clint would walk in with a loud, "Hey guys, I'm home!" He'd hop over to them and plant a kiss on their cheeks, and sometimes one of them would pull him close, so he'd lean in again and press a slow, wet kiss on their lips. If it was Phil he'd taste scotch, if it was Steve he'd get a microbrew flavor of the week, but whoever it was would take their time with him and make his toes tingle.

One night Clint came home around seven and Phil and Steve were gone. He checked his phone, and found a message that read: "We went out to catch the premier at a new gallery. Tony scrounged tickets last-minute. Sorry for the late notice. We'll see you later on!" It was from Steve. Clint typed a quick, "It's cool. Hope it's fun!" back, grabbed a beer and made himself a salad, and settled down on the couch in front of the Mets game. He fell asleep and woke a couple hours later with a crick in his neck. Steve and Phil were still gone, so he stumbled to the bedroom and got himself ready, telling himself he'd wait up for them in bed. He was asleep before they got home.

A couple days later and Clint actually got off work early. It was rare, but he had comp time built up and nothing demanding, so he came home, cleaned up their place, and started in on dinner. He had time and ingredients, so he put together a homemade lasagna with the sauce Phil taught him how to make and went out to their stone patio to work on a wood carving project he was trying to teach himself how to do.

After Loki, his hands shook when they weren't occupied, and he had a hard time keeping his brain from veering into nightmarish memory. It had started to get better, but then it had only gotten worse after the mass kidnapping incident a year or so later. He wasn't on suicide watch anymore, but his therapy sessions were still at twice a week sessions months after the incident, and his hands would shake when he couldn't keep the memories at bay.

It had finally stopped, but he needed to be doing something with his hands or paying attention to something like the TV or a game if he wanted to avoid slipping into a pretty miserable downward spiral of a mood. Steve had suggested wood carving, and he was kind of good at it. He'd made Phil a penguin and Steve a dog, and he made Nat a pretty sweet and sleek cat. Now he was working on a turtle for Bruce. He worked until the timer for the lasagna beeped, and that was when he realized Steve and Phil weren't home from headquarters yet.

He'd also left his phone on the counter and had missed two calls. It was Phil asking if Clint minded if he and Steve went for a bike ride before they came home, and then another message saying they were going to go ahead and do it since Clint didn't seem to be available. He was okay with all of that until he waited two more hours and they weren't back yet, so he had to swallow a spark of fear as he pulled the lasagna out and sat down at the table alone. It was another hour before they got back, and Clint had the dishes done and the lasagna in the fridge. He was out back with his carving project, trying not to be too hard on the wood.

"Hey," Phil said as he slid the door to the patio open. "Sorry we're so late. We grabbed a bite to eat after our ride."

Clint didn't look up from his carving. "Okay. It's fine." Phil pressed a kiss to his cheek and left him alone, which only made him feel a little like he'd been kicked. He stayed out on the patio so late that Steve and Phil were both asleep when he came in.

They missed their usual date night the next week thanks to a mission.

He couldn't remember the last night they all had sex together, and he had been rolling over in the morning to find an empty bed most days lately. Intellectually he knew they were just all busy with different things these days, but his mood darkened drastically. He told Anna, his therapist, about it and she made talking to them about it his assignment for the week. He showed up at the next appointment and just shrugged and said he didn't do it.

Clint's hands started to shake again, even during meetings, so he held them under the table and squeezed a stress ball in both hands. He completely fucked up the turtle he was carving in one stroke on a night when Phil and Steve were both late getting home from work again, so he did the only logical thing: he called Natasha and asked her to bring a bottle of the good stuff up to their place.

She brought Kailua and cream as a bonus. She hated White Russians but Clint drank them and made dumb happy noises as he did because they really did taste like candy.

"Why are we drinking while Steve and Phil are working?" she asked, after Clint downed three drinks in a half an hour. She was dressed in her pale green silk pajamas and the Hulk slippers Bruce had slipped into her closet around Christmas.

Clint skipped the Kailua and cream this time and tilted his head back for a plain shot. "They're working late together and my hands are fucking shaking again. I think I deserve a break like this."

"Clint," she said, and she filled his name with worry and warning.

He looked over at her and shrugged. "Not during missions and yes, I told Anna, The Shrink, about it. She said I needed to face a few things and maybe get something else to do with my hands." He looked at his hands. "I figured holding a shot glass was a decent thing to do with them." He pulled the vodka bottle out of her hands and poured himself one more. The fuzziness and loose-limbed haze was setting in, and it felt like a warm blanket and a lie. He ignored it and drank anyway.

"What do Phil and Steve think?" she asked as she took another drink, "And you probably shouldn't refer to Anna as a shrink, especially with obvious capital letters."

"They think work and each other are more important than anything right now." She stayed silent and drank more to catch up.

Clint passed out on the couch an hour later, and Steve carried him to bed when he got home. It was an uncommon activity for Clint and Nat, but it wasn't unheard of, so everyone headed in to work the next day with hardly a comment. Clint spent the Avengers' meeting bouncing a tennis ball around the room despite Phil's protests, and he ducked out as soon as the worlds "that'll be all for today" were out of Phil's mouth, so he could take some aspirin before he had to work the gun range that afternoon.

He felt a pattern emerge.

He started to get up in the morning before Phil and Steve even woke, so he didn't have to see the empty bed, go for a run until he could hardly stand, come back and shower until his skin turned pink, and only have breakfast on his way to SHIELD. He'd usually forget to eat the rest of the day, especially because he might have been avoiding Steve and Phil, who were often his excuse for remembering lunch. He wasn't exactly sure why he was avoiding them at work, but they didn't come looking for him, so there was that.

He'd make sure he was booked somewhere all day. He went to the range to train non-field staff, where his usual patience began to turn tissue paper thin more often than not. He went to the training building where his usual joking with the new recruits began to turn into growling at them like a burnt out high school basketball coach. He also worked with the non traditional recruits, but the day he ended up decking a privileged Yale grad for bitching at one of them he hit the guy so hard he broke his nose. Clint got a full-on write up reprimand and pulled from that particular duty for a two week suspension.

He told Phil the guy had it coming and he hadn't done that in years, and Phil said, "I know you haven't done it in years. That's why I'm worried."

Clint shrugged and replied, "I'll talk with Anna about it." He didn't.

Another night, Phil and Steve worked late again and Clint ended up wedging himself between his bed and the wall trying to ignore the voices of memory pleading in his head until he heard the door open hours later. He climbed up into the bed and pretended to be asleep. That was fine until he actually fell asleep and woke up screaming a few hours later. He was tucked between Phil and Steve like usual, and they both had their hands on him as soon as they were wrenched from sleep by his screams.

He was shaking and pulled himself into a ball and tucked his head down against his knees as he tried to get his breathing under control. He could hear his own ragged breaths and he clenched his eyes shut against the tears that were threatening to come from nowhere.

Steve ran his hands down his back and Phil set his hands on his shoulders from the front. "Clint, you're safe in our apartment, it's Thursday in the middle of the night. You're safe," Phil said, his voice as gentle as a rocking cradle.

He couldn't stop shaking, though, and Phil's voice, that voice that had been so seemingly quiet the last few weeks, it sounded like a gossamer thread that would snap any second, and disappear. Clint tried to breathe through the panic that was snaking its way into his chest because what if Phil and Steve were really leaving him?

Phil's words sounded like lies and his hands felt like they could snap off any moment and be gone.

Steve's voice broke in. "Clint, breathe. Come on, please. Listen to Phil's breaths and breathe with him." Steve's voice was coming at him through a tunnel, distant and like a recording; Clint couldn't hold onto it at all.

He snapped his eyes open as his throat constricted, and it felt like he was being strangled with heavy hands. He clawed at his neck and felt his t-shirt rip, but he still couldn't get enough air. He could hear wheezing and dark spots danced in his eyes and he thought he heard Phil call for Jarvis, but everything was muted and his stomach twisted because surely he was being left alone again and he couldn't handle that anymore, and bile rose in the back of his throat, but when he tried to vomit it up he was still trying to suck in a breath, and suddenly he really couldn't breathe.

"Fuck! Turn him over," Phil shouted, and the fear in Phil's voice was like a knife ripping through the dusty haze that seemed to cloak Clint like a blanket right now. He felt his own body jerk and he tried to clear his throat and breathe because something was wrong with Phil and that sent fear rippling through Clint's chest, but he couldn't, and he choked and the darkness rose like a dark wave and crashed over him, knocked him flat on the bed, and washed him away.

He awoke to voices, Natasha's flat, angry voice and Phil's flat, guilty voice.

"Have you bothered to talk to him in the last month?" she said, and Clint decided to keep his eyes shut. He really didn't want to have a part in this.

"Of course we've talked," Phil replied. "We live together."

Natasha's tone dropped into the 'you've truly fucked up and what I really want to be doing right now is ripping your arm from your shoulder socket,' and she said, "His hands have been shaking again."

There was silence, and then Steve said, "What?"

"He's awake," she replied, and she leaned over Clint, ran her hand through his hair, and whispered, "I'll stay if you need me."

He cracked an eye open and shook his head faintly. He wasn't sure what was going on, but he wasn't about to have a relationship discussion at the moment. His throat hurt, his body felt like it had lead weights all over it, and he wasn't really sure he had the energy to open both eyes.

She kissed him on the cheek and added, "I'll bring you a milkshake later." which was code for 'you scared me,' as well as being something she'd actually do. He loved mint-chocolate chip milkshakes when he was sick.

He heard the door open and shut, and felt Steve's big fingers running up and down his arm lightly. "Clint," he said. "Will you talk to us for a minute?"

He didn't even open his eyes. "R'lly, r'ly tired."

"Okay," Phil said. "You choked and passed out, and Dr. Wyndham says your weight's dropped drastically in the last month. You need to rest. We'll be here when you wake."

Clint kind of didn't believe them, also he actually was exhausted, so he took Phil up on the offer of rest, and slept. When he woke again, Steve and Phil were both in the room. The weird thing was that they weren't doing anything, either of them. Phil wasn't working on paperwork and Steve wasn't reading or drawing or fiddling on his tablet. They were both just sitting there looking like they hadn't slept in a day or two.

"How long've I been sleeping?" he asked without preamble, and they both sat up quickly.

Steve offered him some water, and said, "About fourteen hours." His voice was rough, and his face was shuttered.

Phil had dark circles under his eyes and was wearing suit pants and a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His hair was messy and the lines around his eyes and mouth seemed deeper than usual.

Clint drank, and leaned back to assess his body. His throat didn't hurt any more, and he didn't feel quite as heavy. He still felt like he shouldn't be in the room with them, though, so he tried to roll away, to close his eyes. "Can I go home?" he whispered. When he rolled, he saw that they'd put him in a bed that was equipped with restraints, even though they weren't using them. He felt a hot bubble in his chest at the sight of them. They'd used them on him after Loki, and once after the kidnapping, and it was almost pavlovian, the anger that they stirred up.

He sat up and pressed his back against the back of the bed, and wrapped his arms around his knees. "I want to go home," he repeated. He didn't look at Steve or Phil, but he felt their gazes like they were hot.

"We need to talk," Phil said, and his voice was shaky enough that Clint had to look up at him. His blue eyes were focused on him, the way Clint wanted them focused over the last month, but they hadn't been there. He felt like Phil hadn't actually looked at him in a month.

At that moment, Dr. Wyndham walked into the room, and Clint finally put together that he was still in the Avengers Tower in Tony's employee medical facility, not at SHIELD. "Clint, you're awake. Good," he said, and he moved to Clint's side. "I'm going to get this IV out, okay? We put it in because you were pretty dehydrated and your blood sugar was too low. You been eating at all lately?" He spoke casually and calm to Clint, and always did.

He didn't deal with the guy very often, but he always liked the way nothing was really a big worrisome deal to this doctor. He shrugged. "Not much, I guess."

"Yeah, I figured. Records show you've dropped about twelve pounds this month. You, sir," he said with a playful swat of Clint's arm, "Do not need to be dropping twelve pounds. Okay?"

Clint nodded. Nothing tasted like anything right now was the problem.

"So, here's your deal," Dr. Wyndham said, and he sat down on the bed. For some reason Clint got a pang of satisfaction at the fact that he was only addressing Clint. "I want you in to see your therapist first thing tomorrow morning, okay?" His voice sounded like a flannel blanket, and Clint nodded. "I'm sending the paperwork from this incident over to her now, and I also want you to meet with our on-site nutritionist tomorrow."

He leaned forward a little, and Clint could see the grey hair peppering his shoulder-length black hair. "You need to let these folks help you, okay Agent? Your job is a rough one. It's easy to let this stuff spiral out of control. I get it. But I really don't want to get another three in the morning call because you're too wiped out to see what you need. Let them help."

Clint realized that he was probably talking about Phil and Steve, too, and he frowned and looked away. "Can I go?" he asked, maybe a little bit petulant.

"Yes," Wyndham said, and he stood up. "Let me get this IV out, and you can be on your way."

Ten minutes later he was on an elevator with Phil and Steve. They were silent all the way back to their apartment, and Clint headed straight for the kitchen and the freezer as soon as he got in the door. Natasha didn't disappoint, and there was a small mint-chocolate chip milkshake waiting for him. He pulled it out, grabbed a spoon, and slumped into a chair at their dining room table.

Steve put his hands on Clint's shoulders and rubbed gently, and Clint tried not to clench them.

Phil sat down next to him and reached over and put his hand on Clint's arm. "Clint," Phil said, but Clint focused on his milkshake. "We're sorry. We've let work get in the way."

Clint didn't answer.

"We have some projects that are overlapping right now, so we've been focusing way too much on those," Steve added.

Clint looked at Phil's hand on his arm and met his eyes. "We haven't touched each other for a month. It's not about work," he said. He ate his milkshake and tried not to lean into Phil's touch out of pure stubbornness.

Steve sat down next to him on the other side and ran his hand through Clint's hair. It felt like he was stroking the energy out of him. "I'm sorry," Steve whispered. "I didn't realize it was so bad."

Steve's hand in his hair and Phil's hand on his arm suddenly felt like soothing balm, and Clint started feeling drowsy. "I made lasagna a couple weeks ago, and I broke the turtle I was carving, too," he said, and Phil's hand stilled.

Phil said, "Natasha said your hands were shaking. It's been since the kidnapping that your hands have shook."

"Well, to be fair, they shook a while afterward. Hence the carving projects," Clint said, and he pushed the milkshake away and wrapped his arms around himself tightly.

Phil leaned in and kissed Clint, long and slow. It was the first passionate kiss in a month, and Clint closed his eyes and pressed closer, tasted the worry on Phil's lips, but he also tasted hope.

He opened his eyes and leaned back, looked over, and stared into Steve's worried eyes. "I thought you were abandoning me," he whispered.

Steve closed his eyes for a moment and then leaned forward and kissed Clint, slow and sweet. "I'm sorry," he said, and his voice was gravelly. He ran his hand down Clint's cheek. "We'd never leave you."

Clint felt his world shift a little in the right direction, and when Phil leaned over with a smirk and stole his milkshake to get a drink, like he always does, it shifted even more, almost back into place. When Phil called into work a few minutes later and said that all three of them needed a couple days off, it shifted some more, and when Steve guided Clint to their bedroom, he peeled Clint's clothes of with a reverent look in his eyes, and they took him to bed.

He woke the next morning pressed between them, feeling the warmth of Phil's back and Steve's firm hand on his shoulder. They were both awake but staying with him, holding him like he mattered, and it felt like things fit again, finally.


End file.
